Racial/ethnic differences in Body Mass Index: the roles of beliefs about thinness and dietary restriction

The greater BMI of African American relative to Caucasian women is implicated in racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. The principal aim of the current study was to evaluate a theoretical account of racial/ethnic differences in BMI. Thin-ideal internalization, the perceived romantic appeal of thinness, dietary restriction, weight, and height were assessed via self-report measures on a sample of female undergraduates of African American (n = 140) and Caucasian (n = 676) race/ethnicity. Using structural equation modeling, support was obtained for the primary hypothesis that racial/ethnic differences in BMI are explained by Caucasian women's greater thin-ideal internalization and perceived romantic appeal of thinness, thereby resulting in greater levels of dietary restriction. Current findings illustrate the potential for racial/ethnic differences in sociocultural standards of appearance to influence racial/ethnic disparities in physical health, of which BMI is a marker, via effects on weight control behavior.     

Introduction: Organ Transplantation—A Challenge for Global Ethics

A social scientific interpretation of the development of global ethics is offered. Both spontaneous and intended mechanisms of the construction of such an ethics within the broader processes of globalization are analyzed, and possible theoretical foundations are suggested. The scientific and technological achievements that gave rise to the medical procedure of organ transplantation generated new questions and challenges that theologians, scholars of religion, natural scientists, and social scientists are now trying to resolve.     

Mixing against culture vs mixing against nature: ontologization of prohibited interethnic relationships

In this paper, we develop the theory of ontologization: Social representations that prevent members of minority and majority groups who are living in contact with each other to mingle. The process of ontologization consists of separating some humans from their own species, and anchoring them in another environment, that of an animal, for example. We propose that underlying the famous slogan “equal but separate” is the social representation of interracial mixing as a “counter‐nature” phenomenon. It is predicted that a sexual relationship between people of different “races” leads to a greater degree of ontologization, and, as such, this miscegenation will be explained in terms of biologistic thinking, like an instinctive nature or atavistic animal impulse. An experiment (N = 360) features the case of a woman who, though already in a stable relationship, is unfaithful to her partner. In a 2×3 factor design, the ethnic‐national identity of this woman (in‐group: Spanish/Italian vs out‐group: Senegalese) and the ethnic‐national identity of her lovers (in‐group: Spanish/Italian vs out‐group: Rumanian vs out‐group: Senegalese) were manipulated. In general, results fit the hypothesis of ontologization in interracial conditions better, rather than the customary in‐group favouritism and/or out‐group discrimination bias. We then go on to discuss the way in which a biologistic way of thinking enables a differentiation at the human level, in terms of culture groups and nature groups, in “races,” so that an interracial sexual relationship is seen as evidence of a wild and irrepressible impulse, which stigmatizes the people involved in these relationships.     

Endorsing Obama licenses favoring Whites

Three studies tested whether the opportunity to endorse Barack Obama made individuals subsequently more likely to favor Whites over Blacks. In Study 1, participants were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for Blacks after expressing support for Obama. Study 2 replicated this effect and ruled out alternative explanations: participants favored Whites for the job after endorsing Obama, but not after endorsing a White Democrat, nor after seeing Obama’s photo without having an opportunity to endorse him. Study 3 demonstrated that racial attitudes moderated this effect: endorsing Obama increased the amount of money allocated to an organization serving Whites at the expense of an organization serving Blacks only for participants high in a measure of racial prejudice. These three studies suggest that expressing support for Obama grants people moral credentials [Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43], thus reducing their concern with appearing prejudiced.     

为普遍主义辩护——兼评中国文化特殊主义思潮

Universalism can be defined as the belief in the universal application of certain knowledge, world-views and value-views. Universalism has often been confused with Occident-centrism, due to the fact that the latter was used to justify the former, which confused the content of a thought with the social condition that gave rise to the thought. For many years, clarifications of this confusion have been made in sociology of knowledge, relativism and skepticism. Yet, the particularistic conclusion thus reached has led to more confusion, namely, that between the intrinsic criterion for truth and the practical application of thought. China, with its long tradition of Sino-centrism, has recently shown a movement towards particularism, characterized by a search for national and cultural superiority by “returning to the source”. In today’s academic circles, some particularist themes are taken for granted, and believed to be true, but cannot be proved with rational examination. The particularistic claims to the “self grounded”, “self-featured” and “self-located” tradition of Chinese culture jointed with the post-modernism, neo-leftist movement of anti-globalization in the West, are not only harmful in practice, but also impotent in theory. The propaganda against the hegemony of Western discourse should be analyzed with questioning which hegemony and whose discourse. Translated by Yang Xiaohua and Zhao Dunhua from Xueshu yuekan 学术月刊 (Academic Monthly), 2007, (5): 34–40, with some revisions     

Research Reservations: Response and Responsibility in an American Indian Community

Community action research among the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation in Montana was undertaken to identify the cultural grounds for innovative mental health service delivery. As an enrolled tribal member investigating these matters in my "home" community, however, I encountered a series of challenges and limitations emerging from respondent reservations about sharing personal experiences of difficulty and distress, and the perceived means for redressing these. Focusing upon a difficult interview with a knowledgeable tribal elder, I enlist sociolinguistic analysis--the study of communicative norms governing who talks with whom about what (and under which conditions)--as one crucial means to making sense of this complex research encounter. Similar analyses would seem necessary to ensuring the cultural validity of research conclusions in cross-cultural action research more generally.     

Book Reviews

James Campbell, Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence
Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric     

The Woman in Black: Exposing Sexist Beliefs About Female Officials in Elite Men’s Football

In this paper, we argue that there are important differences between playing and non-playing roles in sport. The relevance of sex differences poses genuine philosophical and ethical difficulties for feminism in the context of playing sport. In the case of non-playing roles in general, and officiating in particular, we argue that reference to essential differences between men and women is irrelevant. Officiating elite men’s football is not a role for which ‘essential’ (psychological and biological) differences are causally implicated neither in competence nor excellence. Reference to such purported differences to justify the exclusion of women from roles such as officiating is unfounded and sexist.